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40 Cato J. 1 (2020)

handle is hein.journals/catoj40 and id is 1 raw text is: FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY: RIGHT-SIZING GOVERNMENT John Norton Moore How do we right-size government? Even today, when discussing the proper size of government, we tend to use the vague terms left and right, terms inherited from the French Revolution of 1789, when supporters of the king sat on the right of the National Assembly and supporters of the Revolution sat on the left. The near vacuous nature of these terms can be quickly illustrated by looking at aggregations of groups said to be on the left and on the right. The left includes not just progressives, but also anarchists, socialists, and communists. And the right includes not just conservatives, but also monarchists and neoliberals. It is time to retire a vocabulary so lack- ing in real meaning. But how do we at least ask the right questions about right-sizing government? As a starting point, we know today that democratic governments per- form much better in the aggregate than totalitarian or authoritarian governments. The evidence is striking across many indicators. Freedom House, in its World Survey of Economic Freedom, 1995-96, calculated that 24 percent of the world population living in free and partly free nations produced 86 percent of total world output, and the Cato Journal, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Winter 2020). Copyright © Cato Institute. All rights reserved. DOI:10.36009/CJ.40.1.1. John Norton Moore is the Walter L. Brown Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He also directs the Centers for National Security Law and Oceans Law and Policy. This article stems from a seminar the author taught at the University of Virginia entitled The Rule of Law: Controlling Government, in which James M. Buchanan (d. 2013) was a regular speaker. Before his death, Professor Buchanan urged Professor Moore to develop and publish his thoughts on right-sizing government. This article fulfills that obligation. 1

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